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Full-Text Articles in Public Law and Legal Theory
Destabilization Rights: How Public Law Litigation Succeeds, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon
Destabilization Rights: How Public Law Litigation Succeeds, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon
Faculty Scholarship
"Public law litigation" – civil rights advocacy seeking to restructure public agencies - has changed course over the last three decades. It has moved away from remedial intervention modeled on command-and-control bureaucracy toward a kind of intervention that can be called "experimentalist." Instead of top-down, fixed-rule regimes, the experimentalist approach emphasizes ongoing stakeholder negotiation, continuously revised performance measures, and transparency. Experimentalism is evident in all the principal areas of public law intervention – schools, mental health institutions, prisons, police, and public housing. This development has been substantially unanticipated and unnoticed by both advocates and critics of public law litigation. In …